Local governments consider a wide range of policies to increase resilience in the face of myriad risks, and employ a variety of tactics to communicate about these policies to external actors. An important platform to signal resilience as a policy priority is through the budget process wherein local communities decide ‘who gets what, when, and how’. Using computational text mining techniques, we assess how county governments in California signal efforts toward resilience in their budgets during 2012-2017 fiscal years, as well as whether and how those signals are received by the capital market. Comparable budget documents are available for 38 counties across the state for a total of 161 county-year observations. To test the relationship between local government resilience signals and capital market outcomes, we focus on county underlying credit ratings issued by counties. Empirical results show that county underlying credit ratings are insensitive to resilience signals in local government budgets. By examining the efficacy of resilience signals and their effects on the capital market, we offer evidence on the link between policy signaling and financial outcomes at the local government level.

中文翻译：

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信号弹性：对地方政府预算中叙述的计算评估

地方政府考虑了广泛的政策来增强面对无数风险的弹性，并采用各种策略向外部参与者传达这些政策。将韧性作为政策优先事项的一个重要平台是通过预算流程，在该流程中，当地社区决定“谁获得什么、何时获得以及如何获得”。使用计算文本挖掘技术，我们评估了加利福尼亚州的县政府在 2012-2017 财政年度如何表明其预算弹性的努力，以及资本市场是否以及如何接收这些信号。可比较的预算文件适用于全州 38 个县，总共有 161 个县年的观察结果。为了检验地方政府韧性信号与资本市场结果之间的关系，我们关注县域基础信用评级。实证结果表明，县级基础信用评级对地方政府预算中的弹性信号不敏感。通过研究弹性信号的有效性及其对资本市场的影响，我们提供了地方政府层面政策信号与财务结果之间联系的证据。